MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry

Ubisoft’s London-based Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate has debuted at No.1, but its performance compared to its predecessors will be a big worry. Chart-Track says that its numbers fall short of surpassing any of the other major entries in the series”, although it did better fellow non-Ubisoft Montreal developed title Assassin’s Creed: …

CEO Khaled Helioui discusses how it has changed its development culture in the hopes of finding as much success in mobile as it has had in the browser

The Electronic Sports League (ESL)is already one of the largest eSports organizations in the world. But it’s looking toexpandits global reachby 2017—with partnering and drug-testing key parts of the plan. ESL runs its own eSports tournamentsand partners with publishers like Blizzard Entertainment to help them organize their professional competitions, running …

It’s not even November but retailer GAME has hit go on its Christmas marketing campaign. It’s fronted by an animated chap called Gamer Claus, created by artist and illustrator Boneface. GAME describes him as an intriguing and mysterious new character”. The campaign will span TV, print and radio and run …

The PC edition of Batman: Arkham Knight will be relisted for sale on Steam later this week, Warner Bros has announced. The publisher posted the news on the game’s Steam community hub, stating it will re-release on October 28th. The game was removed from from Valve’s service in June, following …

A Microsoft source has confirmed to Game Informer that the company will no longer provide sales updates for Xbox One. The reportstates that the firm has stopped reporting console sale totals as ofits most recent quarterly report– which explains why the usual figures were mysteriously absent from Microsoft’s results earlier …

Eric Neustadter – one of the creators of Xbox Live – has announced his exit from Microsoft after nearly two decades with the firm. Engadget reports on the departure. Neustadter is best-known for evolving Xbox Live from a network of in-house desktop computers to a multi-platform service boasting 39m users, …

Here’s a marketing tie up fit for a quiet Friday afternoon. Bethesda has partnered with Carlsberg to release a Fallout branded beer inspired by Vault-Tec Industries and the multi-award winning Fallout videogame series”. Although presumably that doesn’t mean it tastes like it’s been left to rot for decades in an …

Superdata’s worldwide digital games report for September has shown an annual 11 per cent increase in sales. Overall the digital games market was worth $5.4bn. The biggest growth was seen in digital console game sales, which shot up 29 per cent to $326m. That’s despite the number of console players …

Audiomotion MD Mick Morris has left the company after 17 years to pursue a new and fresh challenge”. Operations director Brian Mitchell will now take the reins at the Oxfordhire-based studio. Morris joined Audiomotion in 1998, and became MD in 2003 after the company left the GBH/Kaboom group. The mo-cap …